Nirvana Guitar Tones with 5 Cheap Pedals | Reverb Potent Pairings 

Reverb has some balls to not disable the comments

Hey mom can we get "come as you are" No we have "come as you are at home" Come as you are at home: 2:22

Pedals: Ds1 and Small Clone Guitar: any bad cheap guitar End.

Kurt actually did use the grunge pedal live for a couple songs before chucking it into the crowd

1 - You are never supposed to turn on the boost mode on the DS2 while playing Nirvana. 2 - Cobain loved mids and lows. He particularly liked the Bleach guitar tone. So much so, that In Utero has a similar tone. That means, you should ALWAYS leave the DS1/DS2 tone knob on 11 o'clock or less (sometimes down to 9), and the amp should have the the mids cranked all the way up. 3 - Cobain LOVED gain, and played really loud. He used stomp boxes in order to boost that gain even higher. Territorial Pissings in the other hand, was spot on.

I love how literally none of these sounded anything like Nirvana.

4:13 smells like “old school thrash metal” spirit

It doesn’t sound bad, it just sounds like nirvana live without being totally overproduced.

The key part of this video is the end. Plugging in your first fuzz / dirt box, strumming that power chord, and being like "I am a ROCK GOD!!" Yeah, that's the best. Dimebag Darrell said the same thing "Once I got my first fuzz box it was over...I was obsessed."

I almost pissed myself laughing at “Come As You Are”. Seriously, what the hell was that

Songs List: 1:00 In Bloom (DS-1) 1:39 Heart-Shaped Box (DS-2) 2:22 Come As You Are (Small Clone) 2:59 Lithium (Big Muff) 3:30 Territorial Pissings (Rat) 4:13 Smells Like Teen Spirit (Grunge)

I'll try to get all the mistakes I could find on this video: -Kurt didn't put humbuckers in his Jaguar, he bought it already modified by someone else. -The BOSS DS-1 was only used to the whole Bleach era, including recordings and touring. -Kurt used the BOSS DS-2 Turbo Distortion for the Nevermind recording and tour, and he continued to use it until the In Utero era onstage because they still played Nevermind songs. Plus, he didn't used the Turbo option, so he just equalized it the same way he used to do in his DS-1. This pedal WAS NOT used to play or record In Utero songs, instead he used a Sansamp both on the album and touring. -The dude played Heart-Shaped Box without the drop-tuning. -He didn't replace his PolyChorus or the Echoflanger with the Small Clone, the Small Clone was used obviously to get the chorus effect, but the PolyChorus or the Echoflanger were used to get those crazy sounds from Radio Friendly Unit Shifter or when they played Endless Nameless onstage (the Echoflanger was used to record In Utero and the PolyChorus was used for the In Utero tour). - Certainly I don't know what they did wrong with the Small Clone but sounds nothing but the actual Come As You Are tone, I think it has something to do with the Depth switch. -It is said that Kurt used the Big Muff in the recording of Lithium, but is not known for sure, but it is most likely (though it could be confused with the tone of the DS-2 with the distortion all the way up, just listen for example at the end of Nirvana's VMA 1992 performance when Kurt throws his guitar, sounds like a fuzz but is a DS-2). -The DOD Grunge was used by Kurt in a few shows on the In Utero tour around late 1993, but it was totally on joke. He literally said in one show something like "I have a new pedal, and it's called "the grunge pedal" ". It was so much of a joke that he threw the pedal in one show and like 20 years later a dude came with it to Pawn Stars.

Killer playing Joe! Loving the tones.

4:12 As great a song as Teen Spirit is, I probably would've gone into Breed or even Floyd the Barber after that awesome feedback

The dialed-in tone on the small clone sounded all wrong

Cool of you guys to upload this on Kurt’s Birthday

"Sell the kids for pedals"

Holy shit! That grunge pedal makes me want to drink pineapple juice after I've brushed my teeth.

I don't even like Nirvana, but I could not help but laugh out loud with that come as you are tone

nirvana probably paid even less than you did for their gear when they started 😂

Right title of the video: "What happens when a Jamiroquai fan plays Nirvana songs".

2:22 I could listen to that all day.

1. the turbo on the ds-2 wasnt engaged, 2. the big muff was on in bloom, and the ds-1 on lithium, switch em round 3. territorial pissings was the guitar straight into the mixer, krist used the rat for bass (breed for a obvious example)

heart-shaped box is dropped tuning as well. come on bro

Ok too much depth to the chorus on Come As You Are, but pretty good otherwise, I think a lot of Kurt's sound on record honestly comes from Butch Vig's production which, incidentally, is peerless

It's like... No one wanted to do this video but they did it anyways because it's their job.

Love the attitude and the sentiment! Punk is punk, no supposed to be refined or precise. It's the raw-ness that makes it awesome. IME getting Nirvana sound will vary most by which amp you use - it's great that you took the time to get the proper amounts of fuzz, delay and echo with these boxes so we can mess with our amp knobs to find the tones we like. Nirvana was awesome - good memorial on Kurt's birthday!

How can you literally get the EXACT same pedals as Nirvana and still not sound like them? Answer: Be Reverb!

Come as you are.........the tone this guy used was awful

Come as you are sounded horrible

Kurt actually did use the DOD Grunge on some songs live during the In Utero tour. Check out the MTV Live and Loud performance. He used it on "School", you can hear the more compressed and treble heavy distortion on that song compared to others in the set.

I think the most impressive about these videos Reverb puts out is all the diehards that come out of the basement

Kurt didn't just buy inexpensive guitars because he liked them, it's because he was too broke to afford anything else.

Did anyone else noticed how wrong the rhythm was for "Territorial Pissings"?

I thoroughly enjoyed this video! Kurt was so simplistic yet so tasteful in his playing and craft.

Happy Bday Kurt❤️🎸

This is awesome. You definitely need these gnarly-sounding fuzzes and distortions to play Nirvana. In a band I had we tried playing "In Bloom" with boutique overdrive pedals and it sounded way too tame. There is a time and place for overdrives, fuzzes and distortions.

No you're wrong because Kurt Cobain had the boss ds-1 settings like this Tone: 4-6 Dist: max Level: max And for come as you are on the Small clone he had to tone like this Depth: on Rate: 12 o'clock

Kurt switched to the DS2 for the Nevermind tour, not In Utero. He wanted more mids out of his tone, even though the DS1 was used on the actual album. The Utero tour was when he switched to the Sans Amp for most of the songs, but still used the DS2 as well.

PROCO RAT, my favorite pedal for that slight overdriven amp tone, to it's fuzz distortion. So versatile

Love the affordable aspect! A series out of this would be great

Kurt’s “sound” was really powered by his Mesa Boogie preamp. Super gritty mid ranges

Always enjoy your videos bud👍

would have been amazing to see a full band come in during the outro smells like teen spirit riff, and just rock it! great video thanks-a-tun

Ah man.. i thought you were going to use them all at the same time then smash your guitar.

Ok I’m glad I’m not the only one who was like “what the fuck is this guy doing to Nirvana”. The in bloom sounded like a ska riff.

Sorry mom!

Only problem with this video is he needs to tune his guitar to Eb. Also Heart Shaped box should be drop Db

When he got all that feedback and smiles I thought he was going to play scoff because that feedback sounded just like the feedback in the studio version of that song then he disappointed all nirvana fans by playing smells like teen spirit.

Sorry mom? More like "sorry Kurt" dude!

I guess this is the only possible algorithmic outcome of me watching Kurt Cobain interviews and Andy demos literally all day today

I got a digitech grunge (remake of the dod grunge) when I was younger because the owner of my local shop told me Kurt used one. It still sits on my board today.

Kurt actually bought his Jaguar used and already modded with the humbuckers and the extra tone knob

I think this goes to show you the value of how awesome the engineering, production etc on Nevermind was....

Nice sounds and pedal. I like the DOD which gives the amount of feedback.

Lmao that face on the DOD 😂 Enjoyed this

4:09 Now that feedback(noise) from "You Know You're Right" makes sense

When you played ‘come as you are’ it sounded like you were horribly tuning it

I don't know if I'm wrong, but actually I think that there is almost like a trend to have a lot of pedals, that maybe are not necessary to get and explore with nice sounds, kurt cobain was one of the guitarrist that I think never need a lot of them, and what a great sound he get, I like just distortion, chorus tremolo, and maybe delay and overdrive and thats all (well wah too)

I like how the gain on the big muff is set at 8 o clock and it still sounds like a wall of white noise.

Man that grunge pedal was the best distortion pedal out of all of em. It sounded amazing. I was skeptical about that pedal. Holy cow

How to sound like extremely different from NIrvana spending 3 times more than kurt cobain in pedals. Epic fail "Come as you are".

Man that DOD pedal!! I had that, my first pedal and oh man was it bad lol I dig the demo you gave overall. Boss pedals as basic as they are they always were reliable and sounded great.

I don’t know why, maybe it’s because I’m just getting into nirvana, (I know) or maybe it’s the guitarist part of me, but I can’t stop wathcing this video! I love it!

I feel like they intentionally did a shitty job just to piss off the super fan gear guys. The amount of accurate information available in a two second Google search is too much to screw up a video this bad.

How to sound like Black Flag

that fretbuzz is legendary!! :D

Awesome video! regards from Paraguay! Long live to Rock Music!

He didn't dial any of the tones in, and he didn't use the right muff. He misplayed some of the riffs, and it was obviously very quickly put together with little effort. 11/10, very in the "teen spirit" of Nirvana. :P

Reverb: Anybody wanna do a video on Nirvana tone? Guy who obviously never listened to nirvana, let alone know Kurt’s tone: Sure

I love the wood pattern on that fingerboard!

Every single song was played wrong in some variation, regarding either major pedal flaws or played incorrectly. Cmon reverb, Ultimate Guitar exists. Use the tabs

What amp are you using for this demo?

all great pedals ...i own them all , apart from that DOD one

Briliant thanks for shareing .

If we're gonna throw DOD in the mix, the FX75B flanger is perfect for Lithium and Come As You Are or pretty much any other song he used modulation on. It can do some nice watery chorus sounds or the warbly ray gun effect like in the live version of Drain You on the B side of the Come As You Are single.

Bruh the puns are too much🤣🤣

That was my first pedal too! I was around 12 yrs old when I started

If you love a band, their influence will be easy to hear in your music regardless of whatever gear you use You can play a 7 string tuned 2 steps down then plug it into a Buzz Box, people will still be able to hear it.

I don't know why the complaints? It gave me insight on how to use those pedals. Thanks.

"Cheap pedals" boss distortion, ProCo Rat, Big muff okay...

Lithium was perfect

While he did use these in studio it was primarily live. But all guitar tracks were overdubbed and multi tracked. But his live rig was mostly DS-1 and small clone for nevermind era. He then switch from ds-1 to ds-2 and eventually to the sansamp classic in the in Utero era.

The Double Barrel V4 is my favorite pedal when I play Nirvana songs

Is anyone else bothered by him playing the songs incorrectly lol?

He did use the Grunge Pedal live in in December 93. It wasn't just on his board. You can heard that awful thing quite clearly on Live and Loud, especially The Man Who Sold the World. He never used the Turbo feature of the DS-2 and it the DS-2 was on his board during the Nevermind tour starting all the way back in September 91. Come on Reverb fact check.

Get the digitech grunge and you're good! I know many people don't really like it, but I loved it ever since!

Kurt used the Tech 21 SansAmp live and in studio circa 1994, he also used the EHX PolyChorus... can you do Placebo Potent Pairings please???

Basically anything that has distortion can do nirvana tone. You just need to tweak it randomly. XD

Everybody knows Kurt used the KOT and a Klon for his tonez.

This is great man solid demo! Grunge pedal was one of my firsts too, I believe I sold mine but I wish I could joke around a bit with it as well. I think it was the grunge pedal, a standard crybaby and boss chorus to round out my first 'rig', hahaha

Great demonstration. Turbo distortion sounded best IMO. I’m going to go out and buy one tomorrow.

The clone sounds broke

LOL, the DOD FX69 "Grunge" pedal was my first pedal too. Though, it was the older version with the "face" and "butt" knobs. Man, that thing sounded like SHIT! Ended up selling it on eBay much later. In some way, I wish I still had it.

He did use the grunge pedal sometimes live in December 1993

Kurt used a sans amp classic on the in utero tour. He did have a ds2 with him he only used it to thicken out some bits of some songs

I have a boss ds1 amazing pedal for the price

a bit buzzy frets!

I liked all of the sounds, I thought it sounded good, my main problem is that the small clone was used for playing come as you are, my guess is they had it on the wrong setting or something

I love the Origins tattoo on your left arm!